“We know that the Iranian service has people marching along with demonstrations,” Manfred Murck, spokesperson for the Hamburg Verfassungsschutz office, told broadcaster ARD.

Murck confirmed research from the broadcaster’s show “Panorama,” which found that Iranian secret police are attempting to identify participants in anti-Iran protests within Germany.

“We have documents that show they are taking videos, that he wants to specifically seek out people,” he continued, referring to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Iranian secret service has also been trying to cultivate contacts within Germany, intelligence officials believe. “Panorama” located a man of Iranian heritage in Berlin who said he had been coerced into working with the Iranian authorities.

Meanwhile 25-year-old filmmaker Narges Kalhor made a last-minute decision to seek asylum in Germany on Monday after she was warned she might be arrested upon her return for showing a film critical of the regime’s human rights abuses.

The daughter of a top advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad premiered “Darkhish,” or “The Rake,” last Friday at the Nuremberg Human Rights Film Festival.

Based on Franz Kafka’s short story, “In the Penal Colony,” the 10-minute film features a machine that brutally punishes alleged criminals by etching their transgressions into their flesh. Film festival organisers described the machine as a “symbol for a totalitarian barbarism" condemning Iran’s brutal penal system.

Germany has hosted more than 300,000 asylum seekers since the start of the year, said the daily Die Welt on Saturday, nearly 50,000 more than first thought, as Berlin prepares for a record influx of refugees in 2015.
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Update: Federal prosecutors announced on Friday they are suspending investigations of treason against 'digital rights' website Netzpolitik for 'the greater good' of upholding freedom of the press.
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Why waste time jumping through the hoops of German bureaucracy when you can pay someone else to take the hassle off your hands? A new Berlin company is offering to do just that - and it's got city officials fuming in the process.
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